blog.noetech.com

Why and How I moved

Now that I finished the move to MovableType, I thought I would tell you why and how I made the move.

First, why.

Blogger had a few things that I didn't like, and few things that I wanted that it did not have. The biggest had to be comments. I liked the idea of viewers being able to interact with the site. I also wanted categories. This was especial needed after I added the book and movie blogs. A better archiving system, specifically, a way to archive based on categories was also desired. Finally, I wanted a better way of including my archives on the main index. You can do this with Blogger, but you have to use java to include a txt file. Not very elegant.

Blogger also has bugs. Lots of them. Sometimes it would not connect to my site via ftp. Now I can get around this by switching to a different pro server, but I shouldn't have to do this. The only thing that Blogger has, is the ability to email a post. It never actually worked, but I liked the idea. MovableType (MT) might actually have this, I just haven't looked yet.

You also can't over look my desire to just trying something for the fun of it.

That's why, here's how.

It was actually quite simple. It took me a total of an hour to have it running. Maybe 5 more to have it setup just how I wanted it. Including my templates.

MovableType requires that your host has PHP installed along with some modules. Most host will have these and will be able to run it. Installing it is as simple as ftping files into the cgi-bin of your site. Then just run one of this scripts and it sets up a blank blog for you.

The most time consuming part was obviously the templates. MovableType's template tags are much more complicated than Blogger's. MovableType has more features, so this is expected. MT uses XHTML and CSS for it's layout. Seems daunting to someone who isn'T into web tech, but it is actually easier to edit MT's templates than Blogger's because of this. In fact, the only thing you need to actually edit to change the layout is the style sheet. You don't have to mess around with the page code at all, unless you want to add things, and then it is very easy if you know html. My sisters could do it.

So there it is. The slim version of how I made the transition. Would I recommend it? If you have been using Blogger for a while, are comfortable with editing your templates, and have started to bump up against Blogger's limits, absolutely. When I setup a site for friends and family I will still use Blogger though. It's quick and simple and even gives you hosting space, which is the biggest hurdle.